Shock. Polls had been moving steadily toward leaving the EU for some time, but then Jo Cox was murdered in front of a library in Leeds and the campaigning stopped for two days in the week leading up to the vote.
The Remain campaign now had a martyr, and the investment bankers, the “bookies”, took the following silence as a change of heart. Mistook.
And so did I, to be honest. The experts were clearly Remain, the Leave campaign seemed shady at best, and you would think that, after the events of the past ten years, no country in its right mind would vote to destabilize their economy, Europe's economy, the world economy, just to lose their say in the formation of EU regulations that they still wouldn’t escape.
I heard the word immigration thrown around a lot, because immigrants tend to be sensitive to that kind of thing, but I never really understood why--Europe's single market is predicated upon the free movement of workers. A change would never be allowed, not without great cost. And what's more, with a million British pensioners (retirees) living in Spain, deportation of EU nationals would mean bringing them back--and adding a lot of pressure to an already under-resourced NHS.
In the end, I hoped for a Remain vote, because we're paid in pounds and our student loans are in dollars, and the first and surest effect of a Leave vote was going to be a weaker pound.
So yeah. Shock.
I wasn't the only one caught in disbelief--nearly all of London was majority Remain. The Remain sentiment was so strong here that the pound, after being down to around $1.40 in anticipation of the vote, was up to $1.50 by midnight on voting day.
When I woke up, it was $1.33.
Thank God we beat the crowds in moving money early--with the rates up and the surrounding uncertainty, Transferwise* was bombarded with requests. They completely shut down on Thursday and Friday. American expat forums were filled with people kicking themselves, wondering whether they should still move their funds before it went any lower.
And then David Cameron resigned. What??? Soren heard about it from his coworkers, and that's when we decided to buy a TV license**. How do you deal with a public catastrophe except to glue your eyes to the television? I must have watched some segments a dozen times on Friday, but I don't care. In fact, I needed to. I needed the truth to sink in. I needed to see people who were angry, people who were calm, people who were hopeful, the people who were going to lead my country of residence through this mess. I needed to move beyond panic, to understand why anyone would do something so obviously stupid, to get an idea of what comes next.
Two years, a two-year period that the Prime Minister told us he can trigger when a new leader is in place and ready to negotiate. October, he said, would be a good time for that, at least for Britain.
Two years means that, of our five-year visa, at least half of it will elapse in a time of uncertainty and what may be bitter negotiations, both within Britain and beyond it.
Then Nicola Sturgeon announced that Scotland may hold another vote about whether to leave the UK. Scotland was completely majority Remain, 62% for the whole country. Many Scots are angry, regretting that they didn't vote for their own independence when they had the chance two years ago.
I understood the sentiment--I was angry too. I love London, and it is not in spite of the people. But the whole vote, even the fact that it happened, seemed selfish in the face of the refugee crisis and terror concerns. Every inbred prejudice my Yankee heart harbors against England bubbled to the surface--but then, plenty of English people felt that way too.
And those that voted Leave did so for a variety of reasons--some because of (probably false) anti-immigration propaganda, but others because they’ve seen the junior doctors driven to protest because they’re underpaid and overworked, and others because the EU is not strictly a democratic institution. They wanted to take control, to have a say in how to handle immigration and trade relations and funding. Many view it as a declaration of independence.
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| The figure on this Vote Leave bus was revealed to be false on Friday |
I understood that too, and I pitied those who were dismayed and regretful when Nigel Farage revealed that some of the Vote Leave adverts were definitively misleading. I pitied all of the UK, that such a decision that was rooted in so many lies and half-truths and undeliverable promises, on both sides of the debate.
In the afternoon, we went for a walk, discussed whether we should stop investing, whether we should start packing our bags, where we would even go if we left. Wait and see, we concluded, because we love London. We love London in a way that we’ve never loved a home before. Still, I quietly rejoiced that our lease has elapsed and we aren’t tied down.
By Friday evening, the pound had recovered slightly, and the stock markets reflected the same small dip up. A breath. Inhale, exhale. In, out.
The BBC made it clear that a unified front would be the only way to stifle the worst of disasters, and they convinced me. They emboldened me, and gave me hope. Hope, until the markets open again and the Tories start competing for the top spot and prices start climbing. Hope, until the EU leaders’ summit decides how they’re going to respond and the reality of the long slog of the next three years settles in and companies start reshuffling their staff.
Hope, for this: the last weekend.
The last weekend where a United Kingdom outside the European Union is still a blinding shock.
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*Our preferred money-transfer service
**A fee for watching live feed that allows BBC channels to produce quality content ad-free. We were going to buy one for the Olympics anyway
